Front-Runner Failure

[Geee]

American Spectator:

In recent years, the Republican Party has conferred its presidential nomination the way companies used to hand out gold watches at retirement parties. Candidates are rewarded for long years of service, finishing second the last time around, and politely waiting their turn. Perhaps it is a reflection of the conservative temperament: while Democrats frequently nominate fresh faces, Republicans tend to prefer the tried and true. Patience is a virtue, respect your elders, good things come to those who wait.

Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, and John McCain won the GOP nomination after finishing second in the party's last round of competitive primaries. After the crushing disappointment of the close 1960 presidential election, Richard Nixon rallied loyally behind Barry Goldwater at a time when many other Republican leaders effectively sat out the race. For this, Nixon was given his second chance in 1968.
Even the one recent exception proves the rule. When George W. Bush, then the governor of Texas, began exploring a presidential bid some polls found that nearly half of Republican voters thought he was his father, the former president. He entered the race with a nearly insurmountable advantage in name recognition. The second-place finisher from the last time around, Patrick Buchanan, bolted the GOP for the Reform Party in October 1999. Bush the son became the natural front-runner.

[righteousmomma]

Some excellent thoughts in this article:

 

REPUBLICANS WERE POORLY SERVED by this tradition last time around, but at least that was an election where the GOP's chances were remote to begin with. Given the economy, Bush's unpopularity, the length of the two wars, and the media's sustained love affair with Obama, it would have taken a flawless Republican campaign to win in 2008. Republicans do stand a chance in 2012 -- if they take care to nominate the right candidate.

If Republicans wind up with unified control of the government, repealing that law will be their top priority. The window for doing so may be small -- by 2014, new subsidies and benefits will kick in, building a constituency for the law based on self-interest rather than just ideology -- and failure could well doom the entire conservative project of preventing the United States from becoming a full-blown European-style welfare state.

 

You could argue that RomneyCare's individual mandate is toothless compared to ObamaCare's, but then you would have to acknowledge the extent to which Massachusetts increased enrollment in Medicaid, a federal program.

The bigger problem is that Romney was hardly alone in embracing ideas he would now like to repeal. David Frum correctly observed that ObamaCare "builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to ClintonCare in 1993-1994." That's a lot harder to justify on the basis of federalism, unless conservatives and Republicans make a clean break from their past record of advocating ObamaCare Lite.

 

Disavowing the Massachusetts law would deprive Romney of a major policy accomplishment. It would also add to the growing list of flip-flops that prevented him from consolidating the anti-McCain vote in 2008. The clips of him confidently supporting RomneyCare -- even proclaiming "I like mandates, the mandates worked" -- will be replayed as endlessly as his emphatic promises to Bay State voters that he was pro-choice on abortion.

The point is that Romney won't have a clear path to running as an economy-saver and job-creator. Big business is as unpopular with voters as big government.

[Pepper]

RightheousMomma, 2nd in the list is most disturbing. "The window for doing so may be small" not just for Obama care but by then takers will exceed earners.